New Girl – “Shark”

Season Four, Episode Twelve

Grade: B-

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So Winston finally became a police officer. Finally! This does open a bunch of possibilities for future New Girl episodes, but first comes first, everyone has to try on his uniform and pretend to be a cop. Pretty funny, but the B-story does involve Coach and Nick’s concern because Winston is such a softie. And it doesn’t help when they find out that his partner is a petite woman.

The A-story revolves around Jess and Schmidt who try to engage with Councilwoman Fawn Moscato (Zoe Lister Jones) to get the construction by their building to be done during the day. But the two go about things differently. While Jess feels it’s best to be like a dolphin and reason with the Councilwoman, Schmidt feels it’s best to be like a shark and attack the issue head on in a ruthless fashion. But both of their worlds get flipped upside down when she, in fact, becomes the shark in the situation.

While Moscato has Jess filling out a ridiculously long survey to post her complaint, Schmidt becomes wrapped around her finger at dinner. He finds her incredibly attractive that she’s completely using him, something that his boss does from time to time. Schmidt has always been an interesting character. He seems to have been following the path of a Barney in How I Met Your Mother, ridiculous at times with opinions and morals that are outside the box, but he never became the womanizer that Barney was. I guess that’s why Coach was brought into the mix because before him, none of the characters really used women like Barney did, or even like Joey did in Friends. With Schmidt there was always that in-between feeling. He’s sexually aggressive, but doesn’t sleep around as often as his character might suggest.

Meanwhile, Nick and Coach approach Winston’s partner, insulting her until she physically drags them to a support group where family members of cops can cope with their issues. It’s kind of funny, but this B-story never really felt like anything. More importantly though, Winston got a good amount of screen-time this episode!

In the end, Jess and some other oppose the council meeting and while Schmidt tries to defend the Councilwoman, he completely makes a fool of himself. But this allows the Councilwoman to swoop in and make everyone happy by moving the construction to the day. So what did we learn? Jess trumps with her persistent complaining, Schmidt is a terrible friend because he was willing to stand against Jess just to have a chance with Moscato, and that Winston actually has a pretty darn good police partner. Oh, and Schmidt needs to find a new tailor or else he won’t be able to get anything done.